The Grand Broomstick Expedition
by Rizu Neko-Chan
Summary: Ichigo's own dream world offers her the excitement from her younger years that she had missed so much while bringing back one of her most remembered characters from her time as a Mew- Kish.


(**A.N**./ Ugh...you have no idea how weird this feels. My LAST FANFIC. I was going to upload this the day I left, but I decided against it so I could properly reply to the reviews and say goodbye to a few people. You knew who you are. Yeah, **you**. Go ahead and review this fic, because it's the last of me you're gonna see 'til my next vacation! Even then, I think this is my last fanfic I'll write EVER. Unless I'm still inspired and decide to write something over summer vacation next year (don't count on it!).

I love you guys! The people here are so awesome! Review or PM me so I can give you a hug and tell you goodbye! ^_^)

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**The bright lights of Tokyo shone out in the dark of night. Tall skyscrapers stood like giants in the center of the city. Cars whizzed back and forth in the streets. In the distance, Tokyo Tower stood tall, its red and white light illuminating the sky. A teenaged girl stood suspended in the air-- in her white nightgown, no less. A certain breath of fear caught in her throat, and she almost choked on it. She looked down to see the road far, far under her. Yet she didn't fall. She was just standing in mid air.

"What…?" she murmured, looking herself over. "What's going on?" Ichigo (that was her name) was confused, and that confusion was about to turn into panic. That is, until a glimmer shone in the distance, like it does when anything appears in comic books. Out of that glimmer something whooshed its way over to Ichigo. She saw that whatever it was wore a pointy hat and was riding a broomstick. Even though this new object made her afraid, she didn't want to move from her spot in case she fell down. So she stood rooted in her place, waiting for the certain something-- a witch, she guessed-- to come.

It took only a few moments before the something came into view. However, it wasn't a cackling witch like Ichigo expected. Whatever it was had pale (not green) skin and was yelling like it was out of control. It went by so quickly that Ichigo didn't have time to see exactly what it was. The thing on a broomstick came to a screeching halt a few feet past Ichigo and backed up slowly, like how a car would operate on a road.

"I meant to do that!" the something said. Ichigo gasped when she saw exactly what the "witch" was. Her alien adversary from long ago. Kish.

"Kish?" she cried. "What are you doing here?"

"Flying," Kish stated, like it was the most normal thing in the world. For some reason, it didn't occur to Ichigo to ask why he was on a broom or, quite frankly, why he was dressed in a black cloak and pointy hat. She didn't even ask why she was standing in mid-air over Tokyo.

She just asked, "Can I come?"

Kish smiled toothily, showing off his fangs. "Sure! Hop on."

Ichigo obeyed, sitting behind Kish on his broomstick. She held fast to the handle in front of her and crossed her feet over the end of the broom.

"Hold on tight!" Kish instructed. He stuck his foot out and kicked the broom off like you would kick off a motorcycle. The broom erratically shot off like a bullet, sending its drivers backwards a bit. The air whizzed past as the buildings seemed like a blur below them. Ichigo shrieked and abandoned her grip on the broom, choosing to hold tight to Kish instead. Meanwhile, Kish seemed to be having difficulties controlling the broom.

"Darn thing!" he cursed. "You'd think it would behave BETTER!" At "better" he pounded the front of the broom with his fist. The broom stopped suddenly. Ichigo caught her breath, breathing quickly in and out. She didn't have much time to breathe, though, before the broom began to plummet towards Earth.

"EEEK!" Ichigo shrieked. "KISH! Make it STOP!"

"I'm trying, Kitten!" Kish grunted, pulling up on the broom. His nickname "Kitten" seemed to set off a certain string of memories in Ichigo. She didn't have time to run over all of them before the broom began to zoom towards normal altitude once more, Kish pulling hard on the handle to make it go upwards. They barely missed a tall, pointed skyscraper. Ichigo could swear she felt it as they went past.

"Come on, stupid thing," Kish groaned. Finally, he had gotten it to the previous altitude. He slowed the broom down by yanking it backwards, then left it at a cruising speed. "Whew," he sighed. "That was fun."

"Yeah…" Ichigo mumbled incoherently. She reached a hand up towards her head. She felt it. Her ears. Cat ears. On her head.

"I have cat ears," she stated. Kish turned his head to look at Ichigo, releasing his grip on the broom. He turned around and sat on the broom, his legs criss-crossed.

"Yup, you do," he replied. He cocked his head to one side. "So, what brings you here, Honey?"

"I'm not exactly sure," Ichigo replied curiously. "I don't usually fly, and I don't remember getting here."

"So you must be dreaming," Kish reasoned.

"That must be it," Ichigo agreed. "After all, you usually don't ride a broomstick."

"That is true," Kish said, brow furrowed. "Also, you're usually not this calm around me. Usually I'd be kissing or hugging you or something, and usually you would be acting annoyed."

"Things aren't very usual around here, huh?" Ichigo remarked. Kish snickered.

"You could say that. Things usually aren't that usual in dreams."

"Things are usually unusual?" Ichigo asked. "That doesn't make a lot of sense."

"Neither does this dream, Kitten," Kish replied casually, shrugging. "If you'd like it to be usual, I could start kissing you and stuff."

"No way," Ichigo spat, turning her head away with a blush and a "humph".

"See? Now you're being usual with your usual resistant attitude," Kish pointed out.

"But you're being unusual by not doing something flirty or evil while I resist," Ichigo contradicted. Kish suddenly got an evil glint in his eye, a wicked smile crawling up his face. The color drained from Ichigo's face as she began to sputter, "No! I mean, um, you don't have to--"

But just then Kish snatched Ichigo's hands tightly in his and wrapped his legs around the back of the broom. With a swing of his legs, he turned the broom upside-down. Ichigo shrieked as she was dangled by Kish's hands over what she observed to be…somewhere above the plains Africa? Kish smirked down at Ichigo.

"Evil enough for you?" he called to her.

"KIIISH!" Ichigo shrieked. "L-let me up!"

"Hm…" Kish taunted, "…well, usually, I would demand that you do something in return. Like, maybe, I dunno…a kiss?"

"Kish, I swear my arms are going to pop out of their sockets!" Ichigo screamed.

"So you'll do it?"

"Do what? Never mind! Whatever! Okay! LET ME UP!" Kish immediately flipped the broom right side up, pulling Ichigo up along with it. Ichigo let out a breath of relief.

"You promised, Kitten," Kish said. "Kiss me!"

"What?" Ichigo asked, bewildered. "I didn't say that!"

"You said you'd do it if I let you up." Ichigo stopped for a moment, wondering over what she had said. She had promised to do _something_…and he _had _let her up on the broom.

"Well this is sort of unusual," she remarked. "You usually don't get your way when you flirt or tease with me. Usually something interrupts us or you give up."

"But this is your dream, remember?" Kish reminded her. "Dreams aren't usual!"

"Well then you didn't have to dangle me over Africa to make it usual!" Ichigo barked.

"But I wanted to!" Kish smiled. "Not the part about risking your life or whatever, the part about you kissing me. So? What about it? Are you gonna kiss me or not? I can always tip the broom upside-down again…"

"Okay, fine," Ichigo agreed stubbornly. "I was just trying to stall in case the Blue Knight rode in on an alien UFO or something. After all, that would be unusual, as is the nature of this dream…"

"Hey, we're practically on an alien UFO right now," Kish pointed out. "I'm an alien, and this broomstick is probably classified as an "unidentified flying object"…besides that, you still haven't kissed me." Ichigo sighed a long and frustrated sigh.

"Okay, close your eyes. Don't turn into a frog or anything." Kish smirked, let out a little laugh, and closed his eyes. Ichigo eyed the ground below her. Curiously, they seemed to be drifting somewhere over Antarctica now. Observing the distance to the ground, she decided that jumping wasn't an option. Then, she got an idea. Leaning forward, she planted a little kiss on Kish's nose. Kish blinked his eyes open and pouted.

"Aw, come on!" he groaned. "That's cheating!"

"Is not!" Ichigo giggled. "I gave you a kiss. And, plus, things are being usual again by you not getting your way!" Kish continued to scowl.

"Whatever…" he muttered downheartedly. He turned around to sit on the broom with his back towards Ichigo, stealing glances behind him every once in a while.

"Hey, Kish?" Ichigo asked after a few moments.

"Yes?"

"I thought you went back to your planet."

"I probably _am _at my planet," Kish said, "but because this is a dream, I'm here too. I don't know if the me outside this dream is coming back, either. I think the me in real life has family, friends, and girls back at his planet too."

"Oh…" Ichigo said sadly. "That's too bad. I kind of miss Kish."

"But I'm right here!" Kish exclaimed.

"I mean the real Kish," Ichigo muttered. Kish's face fell, his ears drooping with the rest of his face. Ichigo noticed this and quickly corrected, "But, um, I mean, you're _dream _Kish and I like you too, it's just that--"

"No, I get it," Kish sighed. "After all, I'm probably just an image created by your brain. Funny how you remembered my personality so clearly."

"This really is a strange dream," Ichigo murmured, glancing down at the desert scenery below her feet. She thought for a moment.

"Okay, so, if you're just an image created by my head, then you won't remember anything I say, right?"

"I'll probably be gone when you wake up," Kish said. "That is, unless I'm a reoccurring dream. Then I'll come back."

"In that case," Ichigo said, "I can tell you anything I want that I normally would never tell you, and it wouldn't come back to haunt me."

"Right!" Kish exclaimed. "So, then, what is it you'd like to say?"

"Well," Ichigo said, tapping her chin, "I've always thought that you were actually very attractive--" Kish smirked. "--though not as much as Masaya." Kish frowned. "I kind of had this little depression stage after you left because I missed you. Oh! And I thought it was really heroic that you gave up your life trying to save me from Deep Blue. That was really stupid, but cool at the same time." Kish smiled.

"Thanks," he said. "I'm sure the real me would be happy to hear that."

"I hope the real you never hears that!" Ichigo burst out. "That would be so embarrassing!"

"Yeah, but the real me wouldn't care," Kish said, smirking. "The real me would-- Look, can we just pretend like I'm him? It's getting annoying to say 'real me' all the time."

"Okay," Ichigo agreed, looking down at the Great Barrier Reef blow her. "You would…?"

"Hm…assuming I am still in love with you, I would probably tell you that it was the least I could do to assure your happiness. Then I would probably break the mood by saying something perverted."

"That sounds like you," Ichigo said, smiling. "And then I would slap you or say something insulting. Actually, I kind of had a little crush on you back then."

"Really?" Kish said, cocking his head to one side. "I guess that's why I'm in your dream."

"Huh?"

"Well dreams are usually based on something in the past relating to the present. So the you in real life now is probably feeling some anxiety, and I probably showed up in your dream because I remind you of the days when you were happy and without a care."

"How…how do you know that?" Ichigo asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Pie used to study a lot of dream psychology," Kish replied. "We don't dream, you see. We lack the ability to enter REM sleep like you can. Pie heard about such sleeping in a book, so he began to study it intensely."

"Oh."

Suddenly, something brushed against Ichigo's foot. She looked down and saw that they were just grazing over the tops of the trees of a rainforest somewhere. They began to sink lower and lower…

"KISH!" Ichigo shrieked. Kish's head shot up, and the broom dove under the trees because of his sudden movement. Ichigo screamed and hugged herself to Kish as they went down. Kish grunted and struggled with the broom. They weaved in, out, in, out through the thick brush. A tree came closer and closer towards them. Kish didn't see it before he took the hit on his face. His hat, however, remained on his head.

"Ow!" he hissed. Blood trickled out of the wound and to the side of his face. Ichigo looked up curiously, shielding her eyes from a cloud of gnats as they passed.

"Hold on!" Kish called. "I'm going to head up!"

"Got it!" Ichigo yelled back. Kish pulled up on the broom so that he and Ichigo were almost completely vertical. Then the broom shot upwards through the trees, sending the two up into the sky like a rocket. Ichigo held her breath and hugged Kish for dear life. Kish forced the broom down to its usual horizontal position with a grunt.

"Oof. That's better. Sorry 'bout that."

"Kish, you're bleeding," Ichigo said sympathetically. She lifted her fingers to his face and wiped off a dab of his blood, showing it to him as proof.

"Oh," Kish said simply. He wiped his blood off with his sleeve.

"That's weird," Ichigo said. "People usually don't bleed in my dreams."

"Well this _is_ an unusual dream, isn't it?" Kish pointed out.

"I suppose so," Ichigo said, shrugging. "So since we're traveling all over the world, can we go to Paris? I've always wanted to see it."

"Okay," Kish agreed. "Close your eyes and imagine you're at Paris." Ichigo obeyed, shutting her eyes tight. She thought of all the pictures she had seen of the Eiffel Tower. Imagining she was there, she opened her eyes once more. She gasped to see the Eiffel Tower right in front of the broomstick. Kish tipped the broomstick to the side so Ichigo could get a better view.

"Wow," Ichigo breathed. "It _does_ look a lot like Tokyo Tower." The tall, pointed tower stood high over Paris, grandly lit up like a giant Christmas tree in the nighttime setting. "How'd we do that?" Ichigo asked.

"It's your dream world," Kish said. "You can do whatever you want in it."

"So I can imagine a giant pickle on top of the Eiffel Tower and it will happen?" Kish shrugged.

"Try it out!"

Ichigo shut her eyes again and imagined a colossal pickle landing on top of the Eiffel Tower like a vegetable on a giant skewer. She opened her eyes suddenly when she heard a crash. A giant pickle, just like she had imagined, was on top of the Eiffel Tower.

"Woah…" she murmured in amazement. "Cool." She looked over at Kish with a strange face. Kish gave her a paranoid look.

"Ichigo, why are you looking at me like that?" Ichigo smiled an evil sort of smile and closed her eyes. Moments later, she heard Kish give a yell. Now he was tipped upside-down on the broomstick. Curiously, his hat stayed on his head.

"That's payback for hanging me over the edge!" Ichigo laughed. Kish glanced down at all the little people below him and gave out a nervous laugh.

"Ha! This is nothing!" Ichigo shut her eyes again. Kish was now off the broomstick and dangling in the air by one foot, completely suspended in the sky. This time, he looked more desperate.

"Ichigo, please don't kill me," he pleaded anxiously. Ichigo seemed to be having the time of her life with torturing Kish.

"Say you're sorry first!" she demanded.

"I'm sorry!" Kish yelled immediately. "Now let go!"

"Really?" Ichigo teased, shutting her eyes and imagining once more. Kish fell another two feet.

"No! I mean, let me back on the broom!"

"What's the magic word?"

"Huh?"

"Let me back on the broom…?"

"Please?"

"Good boy. Alien. Thing."

Ichigo, still wearing a devious sort of smile, imagined Kish to be back on the broom. Instantly, he was there, wearing a half-annoyed, half-amused face.

"Wow, Kitten, I never thought you could be so heartless," he remarked. Ichigo giggled.

"I'm not heartless. I just had a craving for revenge." She let out a sigh and, involuntarily, imagined her home.

Ichigo looked below her and saw that they were back to the nighttime setting in Tokyo.

"I think it's time for you to go," Kish said, looking below him. "I'm pretty sure that you'll wake up if you fall asleep in your dream. It works most of the time."

"Okay," Ichigo said. "Can I fall asleep on you?" Kish gave her a strange look.

"Did you just ask me to sleep with you?"

"No!" Ichigo exclaimed, her head shooting up. "You just need to be my pillow so I can sleep. Okay?" Kish smirked, sighing.

"Got it." He turned around in his broom to face Ichigo and held his arms out to her. Ichigo hesitantly scooted forward on the broom until she was resting against Kish, his arms around her in a warm, loose hug.

"Now just relax…" he soothed. Ichigo did so, relaxing her muscles as much as possible.

"Wait," she said, opening her eyes. "Before I go, I'd like to say something."

"What is it?" Kish said. Ichigo felt another wave of drowsiness hit her.

"Tha…th…tha…" she slowly shut her eyelids.

"Ichigo? What is it? Ichigo? _Ichigo?"_

* * *

"_Ichigo? Ichigo, are you awake?"_

Thirty year-old Ichigo Aoyama sat up in bed, panting. She had dreamed about something, she remembered, but what?

"You're awake," Masaya said from next to her. "You were mumbling in your sleep."

"Oh…" Ichigo said, looking towards her husband. "What was I saying?"

"Something about 'fall asleep' and 'tell you something'."

Then, she remembered it. Her dream. She was a child again in the dream. And she had met Kish. He had taken her across the world, and had brought out a part of her she hadn't seen in a while. The energy-filled, carefree Ichigo of her teenage years. Her years as a Mew. She remembered what she was going to tell him.

"_Thank you…" _she whispered quietly. Then, she turned to Masaya and smiled.

"I just had a dream that Kish came back and took me all over the world on a broomstick! Isn't that funny?"

* * *

_No, Ichigo, thank _you_. It was nice to meet you after all of these years. Alien technology is a beautiful thing. You would never guess that appearing in other people's dreams was even physically possible._

_Ichigo…I am the real Kish._

* * *


End file.
